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A simple method for predicting bulk temperature from tube wall temperature with
uniform outside wall heat ux
M. Lin a, Q.W. Wang a,, Z.X. Guo b
a
MOE Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China
b
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, NJ 08854, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Available online 5 April 2012 An empirical approach is proposed to estimate the bulk temperature in practical laminar tube ow. To
examine the correlation, heat transfer in different types of tubes with wall conduction and uniform constant
Keywords: heat ux at tube outer wall surface is numerically investigated. The predictions from the proposed correlation
Bulk temperature match well with the numerical results in all the cases studied for air ow in the Pe range from 105 to 1032
Wall temperature and for water ow in the Pe range from 70 to 700. The method is further testied via comparison with
Axial wall conduction
experimental data and numerical results of mini (micro)-channel water ow available in literature.
Laminar ow
Uniform heat ux
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Meanwhile, two common tube materials (copper and stainless steel)
are also considered to extend the exibility of the method.
Extensive studies on conjugate heat transfer in a tube with
internal laminar ow have been performed using analytical and 2. Physical model and proposed method
numerical methods in the past three decades. Mori et al. [1]
investigated the wall conduction effects in a circular tube with either The physical model is a circular tube with nite wall thickness
uniform constant heat ux or constant temperature at the outer shown in Fig. 1, whose inner diameter is Di and the ratio of length to
surface of the tube. Faghri and Sparrow [2] numerically studied the inner diameter (L/Di) is set to 100 in order to reach fully-developed
coupled effect between solid wall and uid axial conductions. It was state. The conjugate heat transfer problem is analyzed in laminar ow
found that the effect of the wall axial conduction can readily condition. When air is considered as the working uid, natural
overwhelm the effect of the uid axial conduction. The generalized convection is negligible. The laminar ow is characterized by steady-
conjugate Graetz problem with axial conduction was studied in Refs. state, constant physical property and three-dimensional situations
[36]. All of the above-mentioned literature obtained temperature with no viscous dissipation. The general governing equations are
proles assuming a known and temperature-independent velocity omitted here due to space limitation.
prole. As a matter of fact, the real velocity prole is not known and A mass-ow-inlet is set as the inlet boundary condition and a
both the velocity and temperature elds are simultaneously devel- pressure-outlet is set as the outlet boundary condition. The ambient
oping at the entrance regime in most cases. uid temperature (Te) is 283.15 K for air (Pr = 0.7). A uniform
Experimentally the tube outer wall temperature can be easily constant heat ux boundary condition is imposed on the outer
measured whereas it is impossible to measure the local uid bulk surface of the tube wall (qwo = const) and the adiabatic boundary
temperature. It would be very useful if the bulk temperatures can be condition is imposed on both ends of the tube wall. The numerical
acquired via the measured wall temperatures in order to calculate models are solved by commercially available computer CFD software
heat transfer coefcients. To this end, a simple method oriented from (FLUENT 6.3).
the experimental point of view is presented in this paper which It is well known that, under the boundary condition of uniform
avoids the complexity of the afore-mentioned analytical and constant heat ux at the circular tube without consideration of wall
numerical approaches. Air is considered as the working uid, with thickness, the uid temperature distribution is linearly increased
Peclet number varying from 105 to 1032. In addition, the proposed along the streamwise direction [7]. At the fully-developed region the
method for predicting water bulk temperature is veried through temperature difference between the wall temperature and the uid
comparison with published experimental data and numerical results. bulk temperature (Tw Tf) is a constant.
In fact, any circular tube comes with a nite wall thickness. In
Communicated by P. Cheng and W.Q. Tao
experiments, the outer-wall temperature (Two) of a tube can be
Corresponding author. measured by thermocouples; and the inner-wall temperature (Twi) is
E-mail address: wangqw@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (Q.W. Wang). obtained via one-dimensional Fourier heat conduction analysis. The
0735-1933/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2012.03.017
M. Lin et al. / International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 39 (2012) 582586 583
at
inner-wall temperature (Twi) may be assumed of the outer-wall
temperature (Two) for tubes of high thermal conductivity or thin-wall 4L=Dh
x L; x : 2c
tubes. The ambient uid temperature (Te) could be measured by Pe
Mercury thermometer or other measuring instruments. Usually, the 1
L T wi LT out =T wi LT e ;L
uid outlet temperature (Tout) of a test tube is measured. The inlet L 10
temperature of the uid is approximately equal to the ambient uid
temperature (Tin = Tf(0) = Te). Such consideration is correct in For a circular tube, the hydraulic diameter is Dh = Di.
(a) ideal tube with wall neglected and the dimensionless temperature, (x), is
20
Air x 011=x: 4b
Circular tube (w/Dh=0)
Pe=105
15 Pe=1032 Then, the uid bulk temperature in the circular tube with wall
conduction is obtained as follows
10 T f1 x T wi x011=xT wi xT e 5
1/
0
To check the grid-independence the present computations were
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 primarily performed with three grid densities: 180,044, 787,336, and
x* 1,365,048 mesh points. It is found that the relative deviation of Nu
was only 2.5% between the coarse and ne meshes and 0.8% between
(c) real tube with stainless steel wall the intermediate and ne meshes for air in the case of Re = 100 and
x/L = 0.6. Therefore, the intermediate mesh system was adopted in
Air, Stainless steel, w/Dh=0.5
the numerical modeling calculations thereafter.
20 Pe=105
Pe=1032 The air temperature distributions of circular tubes with thick
wall (w/Dh = 1.5) are presented in Fig. 3ab. Both low and high
1/((x)+1-(0))
400
(a) Pe=105 Tf1 (Te=292.05K)
360 Tf1 (Te=291.75K)
Circular tube ( w/Dh=1.5) Pe=105 Tf3 (Fig.14 in Ref.[11])
340 Twi
T,K
300 Tf2(linear)
Copper Tf3(simulation)
T,K
280
Twi(simulation)
320
320 Stainless steel
300
-3.4K
280
0.000 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.010
260 x, m
0 1 2 3 4
x* Fig. 4. Comparison of temperature distributions with results in Ref. [11].
(b) Pe=1032
390
Circular tube (w/Dh=1.5) Pe=1032 3.2. Micro-channel with wall conduction
360
The proposed correlative Eq. (5) is further testied with the
330 Tf1 (Eq.5)
-5.1K experimental data in Ref. [10] and the numerical results in Ref. [11],
Tf2 (linear)
300 in which water-ow heat transfer in a 10 mm long micro-channel,
Copper Tf3 (simulation)
57 m wide and 180 m deep, was considered. The inside wall
270
T,K
Twi (simulation)
temperature can be thought to equal to the measured outside wall
360 Stainless steel temperature because of the high thermal conductivity of silicon and
thin wall ( = 0.45 mm). The wall temperatures were Twi(0) = 313.15 K
330
-4.8K
and Twi(L) = 382.15 K. The uid temperatures were Tin = 293.15 K and
300 Tout = 378.15 K. The ambient uid temperature was not given, and thus,
is assumed as Te = 291.75 K or 292.05 K. Fig. 4 shows the predicted bulk
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 temperature proles based on Eq. (5) with the wall temperatures
x* extracted from Fig. 14 in Ref. [11] for the case Re = 42 (P = 6kPa). The
bulk temperatures (Tf3) in the gure were also extracted from Fig. 14 in
Fig. 3. Comparison of predicted temperature distributions in different circular tubes Ref. [11] and are regarded as the correct values. It is observed that the
(w/Dh = 1.5).
two Tf1 proles with different Te values (292.05 K or 291.75 K) are
nearly identical and the mean temperature difference between these
two bulk temperatures is only 0.4 K. Moreover, the Tf1 proles are very
The case of circular tube with thin-wall (w/Dh = 0.5) is also
close to the Tf3 prole. The relative error of the mean temperature
studied. The errors of mean temperature deviation are shown in
deviation (1) is 1.3% and 0.8% at Te = 292.05 K and 291.75 K,
Table 1. It is seen that, even for thin-wall tubes, the estimation from
respectively. The results calculated from Eq. (5) are quite accurate.
Eq. (5) is more accurate than that from the linear Eq. (6), in particular
at low Peclet number.
The applicability of Eq. (5) is extended to water ow in circular 4. Conclusions
tubes (w/Dh = 0.5) made of either copper or stainless steel. Two
different Peclet numbers (Pe = 70 and 700) are selected. It was found In this study, a simple correlation with acceptable engineering
that the water bulk temperature proles predicted by the numerical accuracy is proposed to estimate the bulk temperature from the
modeling for the water tube made of high thermal conductivity measured wall temperature in laminar tube ow. In this correlation,
copper was not linear and the proles predicted by Eq. (5) matched ve measurable parameters should be prior known, namely Te, Tin,
closely to the numerical results. The errors of mean temperature Tout, Twi(0), and Twi(L). The correlation is testied in circular air tubes
deviation were that 1 was 4.1% and 0.7% at Pe = 70 and 700, with Pe between 105 and 1032 as well as in micro-channels of water
respectively; while 2 was 18.5% and 2.9%, correspondingly. For ow (Pe = 70 700). A good agreement between the correlative
the tube made of stainless steel, both the 1 and 2 were every small results and the corresponding numerical and experimental results
and within acceptable accuracy. is found. The proposed method has a wide scope of engineering
applications and can be applied to either macro-channels or mini
(micro)-channels.
Acknowledgments
Table 1
Relative errors of mean uid temperature deviation (%).
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Cases Error Pe = 105 Pe = 1032 Foundation of China (grant no. 51025623) and Foundation of Key
w/Dh = 1.5 Copper 1 4.7 0.5 Laboratory of Low-grade Energy Utilization Technologies and Sys-
2 51.3 19.8 tems of MOE (grant no. LEUTS 201003).
Stainless Steel 1 3.3 3.2
2 33.9 7.7
w/Dh = 0.5 Copper 1 3.6 2.5 References
2 45.3 15.0
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